Currently, the built environment accounts for about 40% of the total energy consumed in the European Union and this level is continuing to increase. This high level of energy consumption is partially a result of attempts to create an optimum indoor environment for the occupants of buildings. New buildings and renovation projects on existing buildings need to improve their energy performance while maintaining a good and healthy indoor environment. One way of saving energy is to build passive houses. This paper presents the results of a case study of some of the first certified passive houses in Denmark, called Comfort Houses. The indoor environment is evaluated using both quantitative measurements of these houses and qualitative interviews with the occupants about their experiences of the indoor environment. The combination of these two sets of knowledge leads to a more complete and holistic picture of the indoor environment. It is shown that attention needs to be paid to the objectives in the design process, the documentation of the designs and on the occupant's lifestyle and behaviour. Finally, it is important to educate the occupants on how to live in an appropriate manner to achieve a comfortable indoor environment.
In Europe, energy and climate policies started to take shape from the 1990s onwards culminating with the ambitious 20-20-20 climate goals and the Low Carbon Europe roadmap 2050. The European Commission empower the importance of achieving the objective of the recast Directive on energy performance of buildings (EPBD) that new buildings built from 2021 onwards will have to be nearly zero-energy buildings. The general belief is that the energy performance optimization of buildings requires an integrated design approach and crossdisciplinary teamwork to optimise the building's energy use and quality of indoor environment while satisfying the occupants' needs. In this context, there is a substantial need for professionals such as architects and engineers specifically trained and educated in integrated design approach and trained to work in crossdisciplinary teams. To be able to push forward the development, it is essential that educational institutions foster professionals with such knowledge, skills and competences. An initiative towards this direction is the EU project of IDES EDU: "Master and Post Graduate education and training in multidisciplinary teams". The paper describe the necessity of more integrated and cross-disciplinary approaches to building design through state-of-the-art of the building sector and educational initiatives in the participating countries in the project, and through theory of design processes. The paper also communicates the results of newly developed cross-disciplinary education established by fifteen different educational institutions in Europe. Finally, the paper explains and discusses the challenges encountered during development and implementation of the education across different professions and countries.
In recent years, research and the building industry have increasingly focused on issues regarding the lowering and optimising of operational energy use in buildings. This has resulted in several pilot projects illustrating how these can be achieved, e.g. Danish projects like 'The Comfort Houses' (some of the first Danish passive houses) 1 and 'Home for Life' (active/zero energy houses).2 Besides exemplifying construction techniques and technical service systems as well as documenting energy use, the mentioned projects were evaluated according to the resulting indoor environment, qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings of 'The Comfort Houses' project 3 show challenges in fulfilling elements of the indoor environment, primarily due to problems with overheating during summer. The study also concludes that the design process needs to contain analysis of the indoor environment, besides the development of the design, to make sure the demands can be fulfilled. The research further concludes that there should be more focus on occupants' lifestyle and behavioural traits when designing and planning passive and active systems, as the assumptions in many cases did not fit. In one case, for example, a family was concerned about their child's safety if opening windows sufficiently to allow cooling and therefore chose not to do so, with overheating as a result. Hence, user-friendly solutions should be important considerations to allow the 'correct' operation of systems while also considering realistic user behaviour.3 Similar findings appear in the research of 'Home for life '. 4 Overall, the project concludes that 50% of the altered preconditions are due to factors in the building, control and technology, and 50% are due to the family's behaviour that was at variance with the original estimations.4 With regard to the passive house requirements, the main focus is on energy use. However, the passive house standard includes an overall demand for thermal comfort.5 Nevertheless, this is analysed by using values of the monthly temperatures in the calculation method on the overall geometry of the building. An hour-by-hour dynamic simulation, or at least a simple check of the 24-hour maximum temperature for the critical rooms, would be a more reliable methodology to state the risks of overheating in the actual design. This methodology would also allow testing of different scenarios of user-behaviour and thereby test the robustness of the design. Unmistakably, the abovementioned research states that the user-behaviour and every day practices of the occupants are of major importance in the performance of the indoor environment -issues that are not sufficiently taken into account in today's practices.Along with the development of different low-energy and zero-energy concepts, voluntary sustainability certification schemes (BREEAM, LEED, DGNB) have been developed around the world -certification schemes that have a wider approach to sustainability than solely energy. However, the first-generation schemes still have a large focus ...
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